Online Ad Campaign #1:Beat the Devil - Tony Scott ("The Hire" on BMWFilms.com)
Design and approach-critique
In 2001, BMW's ad agency, Fallon Worldwide, produced The Hire - a series of eight short films, featuring various popular directors and actors from across the globe. In all of the films, Clive Owen plays the "Driver" of the high-performance luxury cars; all of which are different BMW models in the five episodes of season one. However, there is only one model shown in the second season, the Z4 3.0i.
In the final film, Beat the Devil, Clive Owen's character is hired by James Brown to drive him to pay the Devil (Gary Oldman) a visit. Brown goes to re-negotiate a deal he made in 1954 to trade his soul for fame and fortune. Since he is getting so old, he cannot perform as well as he used to, he cannot maintain his fame and fortune, and he can no longer do his famous move, the splits.
The strong and quiet Driver (Clive Owen) stands in the background as James Brown proposes a new wager, with the stakes of the Driver's soul, or another 50 years added to his career. The Driver and James Brown set up a drag race on the Las Vegas Strip, competing against the Devil and his Driver (Danny Trejo) to keep their souls. The drag race ends with James Brown and his Driver narrowly missing a train, and the Devil and his Driver getting hit on the tracks, thrown into the air, and exploding upon impact.
After winning the race, saving both of their souls, and allowing James Brown to retire from his exhausting career, the Driver drops Brown in the desert. As he drives away, he sees a younger version of Brown, who does his spin move and lands in the splits.
For a final scene, the filmmaker shows the Devil and his Driver looking through their apartment peephole. On the other side is Marilyn Manson, who is playing the role of an angry neighbor. He holds his bible up in front of the door and tells them to keep it down because he was reading. How ironic.
Who is their target audience? The target audience for this online advertisement is the work-hard, play-hard customer that averages an age of 46 years old, with a median income of about $150,000. Two thirds of this demographic was male, married, and had no children. Another interesting statistic is that roughly 85% of BMW customers used the internet before making a car purchase. (Hespos)
What are they trying to advance? Jim McDowell, the vice-president of marketing at BMW North America, led BMW on a journey to create a non-traditional idea to impress consumers and show them what a BMW is made of. Producing the series of short films, and using the Internet as the advertising medium, BMW shared their concept with the world through the eyes of the directors who had complete creative control (Hespos).
In these films, the Driver helped the A-List Stars by providing his suave driving skills, but essentially, in every incident the BMW becomes the star.
When did you see this campaign, and where?
Even though this short film was released on November 21 2002, I didn't actually see this campaign until a couple months ago when one of my marketing professors used it as an example in class. I was immediately drawn to these ads when I saw one of my favorite actors, Clive Owen, driving Madonna in a nice car. The various cinematographic styles that each director brings to table makes all of these films worth watching.
What techniques did they use? Tony Scott shot Beat the Devil in his famous trademark style. His scenes have a pseudo-psychedelic theme with a dark and comedic feel (Weaver). Along with the high directing expertise, this campaign includes famous actors such as Clive Owen, Gary Oldman, James Brown, Marilyn Manson and Danny Trejo. It also includes an amusing soundtrack including some action music, and also some of James Brown's own tunes. (IMDB) The videos also include funny quotes like when the Devil is flirting with Clive Owen and says, "well, you don't like girls, do ya?" "I do, actually," Clive responds. And the Devil says, "Really? That's awful. You don't know what you're missing."
Another technique they used was a cameo at the end, featuring Marilyn Manson as the Devils neighbor, this added a comedic finish to the film.
Do you believe they were effective?
I definitely believe that The Hire films were very successful and effective because the results are astonishing, indisputable, and speak for themselves.
Sales rose 12% following these films. By the middle of 2002, more than 10 million films were viewed on BMWFilms.com, and almost 2 million people registered for the site. Out of those registrants, 94% of them recommended or shared the films with friends and spread the viral campaign (Hespos)
Online Ad Campaign #2: The Bark Side: 2012 Volkswagen Game Day Commercial Teaser
Design and approach critique The Bark Side, Volkswagens Super Bowl teaser ad became the most-shared ad in Unruly's Global Ads Chart this January. The LA agency, Deutsch, produced the sixty second ad, and easily made it the most popular ad by attracting 6 46,766 shares online (Waterhouse).
The ad starts off with eleven dogs barking randomly and quite annoyingly. After about four seconds the dogs start barking the Starwars Imperial March song. The video includes dogs who are dressed like Darth Vader, an Ewok, Chewbacca, Princess Leia, and C-3P0. It even zooms in on some dogs faces when they are barking, and even shows the Chewbacca dog doing his famous Chewy call. The video ends with a "walker" walking across the foreground and stopping to stare at the audience. The final cut scene ends with the familiar sound of a light saber bringing onto the screen Volkswagen's message, "Back. And Better Than Ever.," That's the Power of German Engineering," and "Das Auto."
Who is their target audience? The target audience is everyone! It's everyone who loved Volkswagen's 2011 Darth Vader ad from the Super Bowl. It's everyone who loves Star Wars. It's everyone who loves dogs. And, Its everyone who loves advertisements. This ad makes Volkswagen into more than a car company. They become a brand that people love because of their style, their sense of fun, and their creativity.
What are they trying to advance? Volkswagen is using a clever strategy to convince people to continue sharing the ad, in order to reach a wide audience, and create a buzz for the new Super Bowl product ad. The viral video uses association to Star Wars, and their past ad, to create the event that people talk about, which in turn, increases the value of the brand, Volkswagen.
When did you see this campaign, and where? I saw this ad a couple weeks before the Super Bowl, when a friend shared it on the news feed on Facebook. I don't remember how many views there was when I first saw it, but there is now 25,641,188 views.
Do you believe they were effective?
I believe that this ad served a very important function in the campaign strategy that Volkswagen has been working on. The stats, once again, are quite amazing with almost 717,000 shares, the majority of which were through Facebook, and quite a few through blog posts.
Design and approach-critique
In 2001, BMW's ad agency, Fallon Worldwide, produced The Hire - a series of eight short films, featuring various popular directors and actors from across the globe. In all of the films, Clive Owen plays the "Driver" of the high-performance luxury cars; all of which are different BMW models in the five episodes of season one. However, there is only one model shown in the second season, the Z4 3.0i.
In the final film, Beat the Devil, Clive Owen's character is hired by James Brown to drive him to pay the Devil (Gary Oldman) a visit. Brown goes to re-negotiate a deal he made in 1954 to trade his soul for fame and fortune. Since he is getting so old, he cannot perform as well as he used to, he cannot maintain his fame and fortune, and he can no longer do his famous move, the splits.
The strong and quiet Driver (Clive Owen) stands in the background as James Brown proposes a new wager, with the stakes of the Driver's soul, or another 50 years added to his career. The Driver and James Brown set up a drag race on the Las Vegas Strip, competing against the Devil and his Driver (Danny Trejo) to keep their souls. The drag race ends with James Brown and his Driver narrowly missing a train, and the Devil and his Driver getting hit on the tracks, thrown into the air, and exploding upon impact.
After winning the race, saving both of their souls, and allowing James Brown to retire from his exhausting career, the Driver drops Brown in the desert. As he drives away, he sees a younger version of Brown, who does his spin move and lands in the splits.
For a final scene, the filmmaker shows the Devil and his Driver looking through their apartment peephole. On the other side is Marilyn Manson, who is playing the role of an angry neighbor. He holds his bible up in front of the door and tells them to keep it down because he was reading. How ironic.
Who is their target audience?
The target audience for this online advertisement is the work-hard, play-hard customer that averages an age of 46 years old, with a median income of about $150,000. Two thirds of this demographic was male, married, and had no children. Another interesting statistic is that roughly 85% of BMW customers used the internet before making a car purchase. (Hespos)
What are they trying to advance?
Jim McDowell, the vice-president of marketing at BMW North America, led BMW on a journey to create a non-traditional idea to impress consumers and show them what a BMW is made of. Producing the series of short films, and using the Internet as the advertising medium, BMW shared their concept with the world through the eyes of the directors who had complete creative control (Hespos).
In these films, the Driver helped the A-List Stars by providing his suave driving skills, but essentially, in every incident the BMW becomes the star.
When did you see this campaign, and where?
Even though this short film was released on November 21 2002, I didn't actually see this campaign until a couple months ago when one of my marketing professors used it as an example in class. I was immediately drawn to these ads when I saw one of my favorite actors, Clive Owen, driving Madonna in a nice car. The various cinematographic styles that each director brings to table makes all of these films worth watching.
What techniques did they use?
Tony Scott shot Beat the Devil in his famous trademark style. His scenes have a pseudo-psychedelic theme with a dark and comedic feel (Weaver).
Along with the high directing expertise, this campaign includes famous actors such as Clive Owen, Gary Oldman, James Brown, Marilyn Manson and Danny Trejo. It also includes an amusing soundtrack including some action music, and also some of James Brown's own tunes. (IMDB)
The videos also include funny quotes like when the Devil is flirting with Clive Owen and says, "well, you don't like girls, do ya?" "I do, actually," Clive responds. And the Devil says, "Really? That's awful. You don't know what you're missing."
Another technique they used was a cameo at the end, featuring Marilyn Manson as the Devils neighbor, this added a comedic finish to the film.
Do you believe they were effective?
I definitely believe that The Hire films were very successful and effective because the results are astonishing, indisputable, and speak for themselves.
Sales rose 12% following these films. By the middle of 2002, more than 10 million films were viewed on BMWFilms.com, and almost 2 million people registered for the site. Out of those registrants, 94% of them recommended or shared the films with friends and spread the viral campaign (Hespos)
Online Ad Campaign #2: The Bark Side: 2012 Volkswagen Game Day Commercial Teaser
Design and approach critique
The Bark Side, Volkswagens Super Bowl teaser ad became the most-shared ad in Unruly's Global Ads Chart this January. The LA agency, Deutsch, produced the sixty second ad, and easily made it the most popular ad by attracting 6 46,766 shares online (Waterhouse).
The ad starts off with eleven dogs barking randomly and quite annoyingly. After about four seconds the dogs start barking the Starwars Imperial March song. The video includes dogs who are dressed like Darth Vader, an Ewok, Chewbacca, Princess Leia, and C-3P0. It even zooms in on some dogs faces when they are barking, and even shows the Chewbacca dog doing his famous Chewy call. The video ends with a "walker" walking across the foreground and stopping to stare at the audience. The final cut scene ends with the familiar sound of a light saber bringing onto the screen Volkswagen's message, "Back. And Better Than Ever.," That's the Power of German Engineering," and "Das Auto."
Who is their target audience?
The target audience is everyone! It's everyone who loved Volkswagen's 2011 Darth Vader ad from the Super Bowl. It's everyone who loves Star Wars. It's everyone who loves dogs. And, Its everyone who loves advertisements. This ad makes Volkswagen into more than a car company. They become a brand that people love because of their style, their sense of fun, and their creativity.
What are they trying to advance?
Volkswagen is using a clever strategy to convince people to continue sharing the ad, in order to reach a wide audience, and create a buzz for the new Super Bowl product ad. The viral video uses association to Star Wars, and their past ad, to create the event that people talk about, which in turn, increases the value of the brand, Volkswagen.
When did you see this campaign, and where?
I saw this ad a couple weeks before the Super Bowl, when a friend shared it on the news feed on Facebook. I don't remember how many views there was when I first saw it, but there is now 25,641,188 views.
Do you believe they were effective?
I believe that this ad served a very important function in the campaign strategy that Volkswagen has been working on. The stats, once again, are quite amazing with almost 717,000 shares, the majority of which were through Facebook, and quite a few through blog posts.
Works Cited
"The Bark Side." Volkswagen. Unruly Viral Video Chart, 18 Jan 2012. Web. 6 Feb 2012. <http://viralvideochart.unrulymedia.com/youtube/The_Bark_Side:_2012_Volkswagen_Game_Day_Commercial_Teaser?id=6ntDYjS0Y3w>.
"Beat The Devil." BMW. YouTube, 4 Jul 2006. Web. 6 Feb 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qQvXawnmjk&feature=related>.
David, Waterhouse. "The Top 20 Global Online Video Ads For January 2012 Source: The Top 20 Global Online Video Ads For January 2012 http://www.reelseo.com/online-video-ads-january-2012/
Hespos, Tom. "BMW Films: The Ultimate Marketing Scheme." iMedia Connection. N.p., 10 Jul 2002. Web. 7 Feb 2012. <http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/546.asp>.
Weaver, Jane. "That's advertainment!." msnbc.bom. N.p., 9 Oct 2011. Web. 6 Feb 2012. <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3073236/